


Same Coin, Different Faces (Doctor/Master Drabbles)

by SilhouettedBowTie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drabble, Drabbles, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Thoschei, human!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7145399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilhouettedBowTie/pseuds/SilhouettedBowTie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles focusing on the Doctor, the Master and the dynamic between them. Usually completely separate from one another, unless otherwise stated.</p><p>Can be canon compliant, canon divergent, AU, or anything in-between!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Epilogue of a Conflict

**Author's Note:**

> In preparation of writing my super-long D/M fic, I've decided to start writing some drabbles of our precious space boyfriends to get a feel for their characterisations.
> 
> Drabbles here will range from fluff, angst, whatever comes to mind, really. 
> 
> To get things rolling, have this lil' snapshot of the Ten and Simm!Master after the Master was probably (i.e. definitely) being a dick:

It was a single, swift punch to the corner of the mouth that had the force to send the Master reeling, folded on his knees in equal parts pain and shock.  
He glanced upwards from his recoiled position on the floor of the TARDIS to see the Doctor standing above him rigidly, fists still clenched so tightly his knuckles had become white. Despite having such rich, warm eyes the Doctor’s gaze was utterly cold.

The Master stood, licking off the small dribble of blood that had begun to steadily trickle down from him the corner of his lip, eyebrows raised at the incredulity of the other Timelord’s sudden outburst.  
“Well, that was… dramatic,” he let out a breathy laugh, wiping still-gathering blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. The broad grin that was now plastered across his face made the split in his lip ache in response.  
Never before had the Doctor lashed out at him in such an obtusely violent way- before this point in time, he had never expected the other Timelord to do anything beyond sulk with those big brown cow eyes of his. And the Master was _fascinated._

The Doctor didn’t move. The Doctor didn’t blink.

After recovering from the unexpected force of the Doctor’s punch, the Master strode towards the Doctor with an almost feline litheness in his step- he got so close to the other that the two Timelords were practically touching.

“What exactly happened to you,” he asked, sneering as he locked eyes with the Doctor’s. “You used to be so painfully-no, _pathetically-_ predictable; protect your precious little humans no matter the cost, act as much like some self-destructive martyr in the process, blah blah blah…” The pale blond skimmed the split in his lip with his index finger, waggling the now slightly bloodied finger directly in front of the Doctor’s face. “Look at how far you’ve come!”

Jaw set like stone, the Doctor loudly exhaled through his nose. “Stop it.” Not a plea, not a request- a command, almost.

_The Doctor’s rage always did burn cold_ , thought the Master with a strangely fond sentimentality. _Despite regeneration after regeneration, that never changes._

They continued to stand there, eyes locked and faces blank, both coolly regarding the other.  
Eventually, the Master raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I’ll stop now.” Slowly, he lowered his arms. Before the Doctor had the opportunity react, the Master swung a fist and hit him precisely where he had been punched shortly before,

“…after I return the favour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this, I hope you enjoyed!  
> I *should* be adding the next drabble in the next few days, so keep an eye out for that!
> 
> Wanna request a drabble? Wanna drop me some feedback? Feel free to drop a comment down below saying so! 
> 
> Alternatively, hit me up on my Tumblr- www.shortassmoriarty.tumblr.com
> 
> See ya 'round! c:


	2. Just One More Moondance.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which not all days spent on the TARDIS are bad.

The Doctor had been whimsically navigating his way to the TARDIS Console room- his attention up until then having been preoccupied by a tangential though regarding the aerodynamics of ducks- when he had halted to a sudden standstill, brows furrowed deeply.

Off in the distance, in the very destination he was headed, the Doctor could hear music blaring from the TARDIS’ speakers, paired with somebody singing with a startling amount of vivacity.

The Doctor realized that ‘someone’ in particular was the Master- couldn’t have been anyone else, lest another red-headed bride had suddenly materialized in his Console room.  Unbeknownst to him, the Doctor was grinning enormously as he crept to the Console Room, wavering just out of sight at the entrance.  
 The increasingly inquisitive Timelord immediately recognized it as a song from early Earth; sometime during the mid-1900s, if he was to take a guess. _So he’s constantly harping on about humans and their lack of ability to produce anything even slightly valuable in their entire existence, and yet here he is singing his hearts out. Hypocrite._

Straining his ears in an attempt to place the lyrics, the Doctor overheard a sonorous voice singing with undeniable gusto;  
  
“ _Dressed up like a million trooper ._  
_Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper,_  
_Super-duper._ ”

The Doctor snorted, bemused but not angry. Leave it to the Master to somehow gain access to the Doctor’s music collection and the TARDIS’ speakers unbeknownst to the very owner of said music and TARDIS (he decided to not bother asking since he'd never get any reliable answers anyway, especially when considering the Master's penchant for never giving a straight answer). Without a pause for hesitation, the Doctor bounced into the Console Room, and began to waltz towards the quizzical- but not unamused- Master. Taking the Master’s hands and spinning him around with almost choreographed ease, the Doctor chimed in for the second verse of the jazz song.

“ _Come let’s mix where Rockefellers_  
_walk with sticks_  
_Or umbrellas in their mitts_  
_Puttin’ on the Ritz._ ”

Laughing, the two danced and sang together until the song’s end, which arrived all too quickly for either’s liking.  
The Master had danced with a pure spark of energy that emerged far too rarely these days- but when it did, it was like a pristine ray of light piercing the dark, turbulent clouds that occupied the Timelord’s head. He moved and sang with an effortless grace that the Doctor had always admired ever since the days of the Academy, never straying further than arm’s reach of the Doctor.  
Alternatively, the Doctor danced with the efficiency and precision of a man whom had spent far too many hours studying away about dancing techniques, and even though he sang at a higher pitch than the Master the two still somehow managed to harmonize perfectly.

When the next song played- Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance’, if the Doctor knew his 1970s-soft-rock-smooth-jazz songs correctly (which he did, thank you very much)- the two exchanged boyish grins and, as if through in agreement of a silent conversation, began to dance together once more.

If they continued to waltz, slow dance and swing for the next few hours neither commented on it, nor cared, because for the first time in a lifetime everything felt to be right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... I actually comitted and uploaded a second chapter of something!? Good lord, how unprecedented.
> 
> Anywho, I hope y'all enjoyed! I decided to write something far more fluffy this time around after the less-than-fluffy first chapter. :') 
> 
> Next one to look out for is gonna be an AU featuring a cursed man visiting a Witch Doctor. ;D 
> 
> As always, feedback and/or requests are always welcome, and you can also catch me at my Tumblr, shortassmoriarty.tumblr.com
> 
> Ciao, lovelies! 
> 
> (And, if you keep an eye on my 8tracks account CandiedTrickster, you may or may not find a playlist inspired by this drabble appearing on there in the near future. O: )


	3. Ghosting (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back..."  
> \- 'Straw House, Straw Dog' by Richard Siken
> 
> (In which Time Lords and Daleks don't exist, but ghosts do.)

Some days were kinder than others.

John was never certain of what sort of day it was going to be, either.   
 Some days he would wake up in his bed- what once was  _their_ bed _,_  he’d think with a wince- and he’d find himself to be incapable of so much as dragging himself into the kitchen and getting a glass of water, let alone try to leave the house. Too numb to even cry.

Those days were empty days; the sorts of days that were just fillers between the  _real_ days, where John could feel like he wasn’t a ghost haunting his own home.

Then there were the cruel days- where the only thing he could do was cry. Even something as insignificant as a certain phrase would remind him of  _him_ , and that was it for the rest of the day. He’d break apart shortly after, and it was always either Martha or Jack that would have the delicate task of sweeping and gluing the pieces of him back together.

There were some days, however, that were gentle ones. Those were the ones where John could go about his life and be the Doctor he was meant to be. In a grand act of what some would consider being cosmic benevolence, all would seem to be as if there hadn’t ever been an incident involving his partner, his partner’s jealous ex-wife, and a gun. All he had to do on those days was pretend that he didn’t see the sympathetic- sometimes bordering dangerously on pitying- looks of his friends and co-workers.

Soon enough the cruel truth would start writhing about in his in head once more, like an agitated serpent.

Harry was dead.

It was no surprise to anybody that the weeks leading up to the anniversary of one Harold Saxon’s death would be particularly harrowing ones for John- so instead of treating him as a regular person, they all were acting as if he was some precious cargo crafted out of explosives.  
John couldn’t help but resent that. He knew that their hearts were in the right places, but all this special treatment lead to him being even more irritable.

So of course John was less-than-amused when he was unexpectedly awoken to a calamitous crashing from his kitchen.

Groaning, John rolled over to his digital clock. It announced in loud, bold red digits that it was 3:13 AM.

Fantastic.

“If it’s that neighbour’s cat again, I swear…” John mumbled in between an equal-parts sleepy and irritated sigh as he wiped away the sleep from his eyes.

Another crash from the Kitchen.

Another sigh from John.

“This is probably something that you should go investigate around about now, John,” he muttered once more to himself.   
(A quirk that had developed at some point after Harry died- some noise to replace the noises that were once from  _him_.)

With that, John Smith lurched out of their- no, his- bed and out of his (not their. Not anymore) room.

Before he had even managed to reach the kitchen, John immediately noticed that things were off. The most glaringly obvious being that the small TV in the lounge room was on, the volume was curiously low- as if someone had been watching it but had the volume low enough so as to not alert John.

A rerun of  _The Bold and the Beautiful_  was on (or something of that calibre- Harry was always just that little bit too fond of garbage television), the volume so faint that John had to strain his ears to pick up on the certainly mundane dialogue between the two hyper-masculine men on screen.

Nobody was here, though. Even if it was a drunken Jack stumbling his way in (an incident that was certainly not unprecedented. John still doesn’t know how the hell Jack managed to get a set of his keys in the first place, anyway), the alarm system would have kicked in by now.

Picking up the dusty old remote from the dusty old coffee table- although John could have sworn it had previously been placed on top of the TV- he hit the ‘Power’ button with about as much vitriol as what one could possibly muster when hitting a ‘Power’ button. The TV flicked off with a final ‘ _zwip!_ ’.

Finally. Total silence at last.

Eventually, John’s eyes wandered over to the kitchen- he couldn’t help but feel an overbearing sense of dread surrounding everything that was happening, despite knowing that there surely will be a logical explanation for everything going on.

Surely.

Before going to go face whatever was awaiting him in his kitchen, John decided to head over to his alarm system in the entrance hall opposite to the kitchen.   
The condition it was in was exactly as he had expected; it hadn’t been triggered, and subsequently it’s harmless little green light pulsed ever onwards, as steady and consistent as a heartbeat.   
 From the state of his alarm, John was able to feel fully comfortable in believing that the source of the ruckus and the television wasn’t human- it couldn’t possibly have been. The alarm certainly would have tripped by now if someone had tried to force open the door without the keys and the pin to unlock (and nobody who was alive knew the pin outside of John, Jack and Martha).

In favour of pausing to think of the dead people who knew the pin to this house, because if nothing else John was so  _tired_  of thinking of the dead, he decided that maybe it was finally time to investigate whatever happened in the kitchen.  
With little haste but great apprehension, John slowly advanced towards the kitchen.

Of course, the TV decided to flicker back to life as soon as John passed by it in his attempt to enter his kitchen.

“You just  _had_  to do that…” John muttered at the TV, more irate at the box than what he probably had any human right to be.

Considering how the night had gone up until this point, John was scarcely surprised by this development (although that wasn’t to say that has growing anxiety had dissipated at all).  
This time, it was a pre-recorded episode of ‘ _Days of Our Lives_ ’, which happened to be Harry’s favourite soap-opera (how it was superior than the others was beyond John), which he happened to be far too emotionally invested in than was justifiable- although he would have sooner burst into flames on the spot rather than ever admit to that.

Harry had owned a VHS player, which he used to record his dubious-quality shows on. Despite his best efforts, John had valiantly tried (and failed) to get Harry to get with modern times and  _just pirate the damn thing online_. Harry had staunchly refused, bitter old hipster that he was.

(John had even downloaded all of it- up to date, no less- and given Harry the USB with it all on it but all it ever did was remain perpetually plugged into the TV, neglected and never used).

John, having realised that he had been toting the remote around the room with him whilst inspecting the alarm, hit the ‘Power’ one more time. The TV responding with one more  _‘zwip!’_  as it flicked off.  
 John set the remote down on the coffee table, it’s lacquered wood tarnished from the countless times he had set mugs down sans a coaster (much to Harry’s ire), with a sense of uneasy finality.

Eyeing the TV suspiciously, John at last entered the kitchen.

John didn’t exactly know what it was that he was expecting to see in the kitchen; a bandit wearing a sock over his head with the eyes cut out, a rat having broken in via a window, maybe even a freak swarm of cockroaches which had been manifesting beneath the floorboards over the years.

Instead, he was met with nothing. Not even any mess.

John was in the middle of turning around and calling it a (very unusual) night, sleep it off and hopefully forget about the whole thing when it- finally- hit him what was wrong.

_Not even any mess, John._

John whipped around, pivoting with such force he nearly staggered. He looked around and realised that his kitchen  _was_  different- it had actually been cleaned.

“What the… fuck?” John finally finished in a whisper.  
John had never been a hoarder or unhygienic, but ‘neat’ and ‘organised’ were not words that friends of John Smith would use when describing him. Books were constantly towering on the floor (he was reading all of them, he swears), cold tea scattered throughout the apartment in an assortment of curious locations. Dishes were  _always_  perpetually stacked up by the sink.  
From where he was standing, John could see the dishes placed back in cabinets and shelves- where they should actually be.

Somebody had broken into John’s house and… done the dishes? 

The TV snapped back to life.

John stormed into the lounge room, more frustrated and confused than frightened at this point, “okay, seriously, who is doing,” John froze in place, “…this.”

What had interrupted John’s outburst was something that unequivocally destroyed any pretence that John was going to find a ‘perfectly logical’ explanation for the night.

The TV remote was floating mid-air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, it's been like a year and a half since I updated this?? Sheesh.  
> I started Uni and I guess that occupied the bulk of my time, that and I completely lost momentum in writing half-way through what would have been chapter three (which will now probably be, what, chapter five? Yeah.) so hhhh sorry about that!!! I promise I'll be more diligent with this sorta stuff!
> 
> So yeah, as an apology I decided to split this drabble into two parts, to at least give y'all s o m e t h i n g aha- sorry that this part is kinda slow, I had to establish it before I got to the good stuff. Take it as a micro-slow-burn :^)  
> This one's kinda sad (and more spooky than what I intended?), but I guarantee part two is far less of a downer!!

**Author's Note:**

> Wanna request a drabble? Wanna drop me some feedback? Feel free to drop a comment down below saying so! 
> 
> Alternatively, hit me up on my Tumblr- www.ravenstagged.tumblr.com
> 
> See ya 'round! c:


End file.
